RIYADH: The Shoura Council will discuss the possibility of paying a monthly allowance to unemployed Saudi youths until they find work.
The proposal for a interim allowance to the unemployed will be taken up on Sunday when a proposal from the Committee on Human Resources Management will be tabled for discussion.
Shoura members will study the proposal in determining the period for the interim allowance and the volume of the payment to be made to unemployed youths.
In 2008, the General Statistics Department at the Ministry of Economy and Planning estimated the total number of unemployed Saudi men and women at 454,000. The study claims that about 56 percent of that number think of going abroad to find jobs while 86 percent believe it would be difficult for them to get jobs in the Kingdom.
As many as 66 percent of these unemployed youths believe the presence of a large number of expatriates is the main reason for their unemployment. There are more than seven million guest workers in the Kingdom. Forty-seven percent of them believe that the number of youths graduating from Saudi universities and colleges is greater than the number of available jobs.
